


Vespers

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse, Dark, End-times-y, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 02:43:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5189144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ok. This is what comes when I let myself write when I'm just having a dark, grumpy, grim evening. It's DARK, folks. Sweet and loving in it's own way, but it's dark, and low-key, and the OTP of Mycroft and Greg is unstated and undemonstrated by anything but their choice of where to be and with whom when the shit starts hitting the rotating ventilator blades. </p><p>I like it-but I'm in a VERY Old Lady Goth mood. Morticia Adams and I are chums tonight. See what you think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vespers

Lestrade has been along for the whole ride—sometimes racing at Sherlock and John’s side, sometimes cajoling his team as they crept out in their stab vests, uneasy as they broke out weapons few had ever used before. He’d been in the hospital as first Dimmock and then Sally were declared dead. He’d been in Hyde Park when the incendiaries were detonated under the Red Cross tents holding London’s children. He’d been with Anthea as she and her people defended Prince William’s retreat to the escape car—a car he refused to even think about out of superstitious fear that somehow, somewhere there was someone who’d read his mind and use the knowledge there to track their fleeing hope and kill him…

Now he was in the War Room with Mycroft.

The other man was neat as always. The details of that polished, groomed perfection bombarded Lestrade. Hand-made shoes, glossy and polished, cap-toed oxfords tied in classic criss-cross with a bow at the top. Their soles were thick, sound leather shaped and curved under heat and steam. The bottoms were painted a near-flesh pink, and were barely worn. He wore a stick-pin in his silk tie. His waistcoat was black—infinite black of the sort that disappeared. So, too, was Mycroft’s suit. He looked like a man garbed in midnight.

“Who else is in here?” Lestrade asked. “I’ll see about getting ‘em out and on their way.”

“Already done,” Mycrort said, voice calm. “We’re last in the building.”

“Then we turn the lights off when we go?”

Mycroft shot him a wry, forbidding look, then sighed. “Given how little time is left, I suppose I should be more tolerant of humor….” He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “You can go, you know. This only takes me. Me and the codes.”

“”No. I think I’ll see it through to the end.”

“You’re sure? The Brave New World will no doubt need men like you. It always has done.”

Lestrade shrugged and looked aside, avoiding those penetrating blue eyes. “If you get jumped the entire thing is over.”

“It’s over anyway. Once you’ve used the ultimate deterent, it’s used.”

“Yes. But there’s going to be a lot of competition gone. I figure you’re buying us a few centuries to try to put things back together.”

“Or to allow the hordes to run roughshod over all that’s left of the dream.” Mycroft’s wide mouth twitched. “It was a beautiful dream, though, wasn’t it? From the Magna Carta on. Power and discipline. Checks and balances. Freedom under law.”

Lestrade grunted. “It will go on.”

Mycroft nodded and said, fiercely, “That I can make sure of.” He moved silently over to the wall, and opened the wall safe. He pulled out the computer—the one tablet in the world prepped to bring Armageddon. He opened it like a man opening a jewel chest, and set it gently on his desk. “What time is it?” he asked.

Lestrade, looking out toward Big Ben, standing alone in the shattered ruins of London, said, “Going on sixish.”

“Vespers. How fitting. Is the sun going down?”

“Not sure. The stones are glowing red—but they have been all day, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“The ravens—they’re gone. None left near the Tower.”

“No doubt the bloodtide killed them all as an act of demoralization.”

“Worked,” Lestrade said. “What happens after you push the buttons and enter the codes and all that jazz?”

“Quite a lot of things blow up.”

“This building?”

“I honestly do not know. Possibly. It would ensure certain secrets never escaped into the wild world…”

“Mmm.”

They were silent then as Mycroft’s fingers flew and the laptop keys rattled softly. There was a regular pace to the process. Mycroft would complete a series, then wait as the next series opened. Then he’d settle back, entering numbers, letters, sequences.

“Any way to know if it’s working?”

“The feedback so far is affirmative.”

“Of what?”

“Let us simply say that you need not worry about missing the opening of the Moscow Ballet this year.”

“That’s it?”

“Hardly.”

“What will be left after?”

“Canada. Australia. New Zealand. I was in a good mood, so I spared the United States, too, though no doubt many will damn my memory for having been softhearted.”

“How long did you know this…position….was assigned to you?”

Mycroft didn’t look up, but said, “How long have you known me?”

“That long?”

“Longer.”

They fell silent again.

A bomb exploded in the city, bringing down Big Ben. Lestrade flinched and looked away, ignoring tears.

“It isn’t supposed to end like this,” he husked.

Mycroft hummed agreement, then said, “But that is the point, my dear Lestrade. It has not ended. It will never end. This is merely sundown. And now…the world must wait for dawn.” He closed his laptop then, laid his arms across its closed lid and his head on his arms, and wept, silent and weary and at the end of his own strength.

It was dark when they spoke again.

“Do you think Sherlock made it?” Lestrade said, from the sofa on the far side of the room.

“If he did as I suggested,” Mycroft replied. “Not that I expect to ever know.”

“So—that’s it. You lie down and die?”

“No,” Mycroft said, and stood. He picked up the laptop, flipped it, and removed the hard drive, dropping it in his jacket pocket. “I am afraid I live.”

“What? And run the world from a hidden fortress under the Swiss Alps?”

“No.” He looked around, his eyes a mere glitter in the dark room, his black suit rendering him nearly invisible. “No. I just…live. I thought perhaps I would sell something. Books, maybe. Books sound nice. We’re going to need books.”

Lestrade shifted. “Got a use for a partner? Strong back, weak mind? Lifts crates if you give ‘im time to look up ‘is ‘ernia truss?”

He could almost hear the smile—soft, controlled, but welcome. “I could indeed,” he said. “I had a little place in mind in Bath. Shall you join me?”

“Reckon I will,” Lestrade said.

They walked toward the door.

“Last in the building turns out the lights,” Lestrade said. “But there aren’t any lights, are there?”

"Only the ones we take with us,” Mycroft said…then delicately turned and clasped the other man close for a fleeting second, whispering, “I’m glad you’re with me.”

Lestrade jerked him back and gave him a heartier embrace. “You, too.”

“You’re not ashamed of what I’ve done?”

“No. Grieved. That’s different. Come along, lovie. We need tea and a place to kip, and you need to get that drive hid somewhere.”

“That I do,” Mycroft said, and they left the building together and never returned again.


End file.
